Earth Island Institute

Yesterday I heard that Y Combinator is funding its first non-profit. It’s pretty cool to see a for-profit incubator dipping its toes into the non-profit world, but there have been non-profit incubators around for a long time. One of them is Earth Island Institute. They’re a Berkeley, CA based organization that acts as a “hub for grassroots campaigns dedicated to conserving, preserving, and restoring the ecosystems on which our civilization depends.” So far they have incubated over 100 startup environmental projects and helped them get off the ground by providing administrative and financial resources that are essential for early stage non-profits.

Island Life

Earth Island Institute has a great intro video that describes in detail what they do, so I recommend that you take a few minutes to watch it:

One of Earth Island Institute’s most well known successes is getting 100% of American tuna to be dolphin safe, but there are tons of other projects that have made a significant impact on the environment. You can browse through all of them here. Earth Island Institute also publishes the Earth Island Journal and runs the New Leaders Initiative. They look like a really interesting organization, and that’s why you should visit their Jobs page. They don’t actually have anything full-time posted there, but there is a Development Assistant position posted on Idealist. It’s a perfect entry level job for a budding environmentalist, so check it out.